I address your request with great gravity. And I gotta repeat myself.
Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree. An apple fell down onto his head.
He said "Ouch!" And then the greatest biomimetic epiphany of all times
occurred. If apples behave this way . . . . The rest is history.
Are you denying that this is a true example of biomimetics?
Kalman Schulgasser
-----Original Message-----
From: Engineers and biologists mechanical design list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Julian Vincent
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 3:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Ghosties
There are quite a few stories which do the rounds regularly of systems which
purport to be derived biomimetically and are nothing of the sort. I have
researched some of these, since it seems to me that it's important to sort
out how ideas can profitably be moved from biology to technology, and
counter-examples might be useful as examples of bad science, wishful
thinking, post hoc propter hoc, etc.
The ones I know of are:
**Roof of the Crystal Palace: The corrugated roof was invented in 1810 or
earlier by John Claudius Loudon, an inventive horticulturalist, some 40
years before the Crystal Palace was designed and (as far as I can tell)
before people in the UK had come across the floating leaves of the lily,
Amazonica.. The corrugated roof bears no relation to the leaves of lily,
but the half-round arch which tops the Crystal Palace (not present in the
original drawings) is very reminiscent of the leaf in its design. There may
be a connection there. A result of lax reportage by the Press?
**Eiffel Tower: This was the first structure to be designed according to
wind loadings. Its hierarchical strutted structure is probably a result of
limited access to the site. The Tower is nothing to do with the structure
of bones, tulip stems, or anything else biological.
**Sydney Opera House: Nothing whatsoever to do with shells. It's a shell
structure, but that's a technical description. Nothing in the original
accounts of its design or structure says anything about a biomimetic origin.
**Polar Bear light guides: The bear's hair does not function as a light
guide (shown experimentally) although light guides arranged in the same way
can have useful properties.
**Eastgate Centre, Harare: Doesn't work like a termite mound (technically as
a stack - chimney - which can draw air through the system) because termite
mounds don't work like that! The building was designed before people
understood how the nest's gas exchange system really works (it seems to be
more like our lungs, semi-tidal and not mixing very much). And people
ignore that insects can cope with a wide range of CO2 in the air surrounding
them.
Any more to add to this hit list (there must be!)?
How do we rectify these fairy tales?
Julian Vincent
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